Harvey Johnson Jr.http://northsidesun.com/taxonomy/term/271/0
enFormer mayor defends city’s road maintenancehttp://northsidesun.com/news-opinion-editorials/former-mayor-defends-city%E2%80%99s-road-maintenance
<div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img src="http://northsidesun.com/sites/northsidesun.com/files/styles/large/public/field/image/Harvey%20Johnson.jpg?itok=qNO1sP5_" width="576" height="288" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"> <p>Dear Editor:</p>
<p>I am writing to correct certain information contained in your article, "Dilapidated roads underscore Jackson leadership crisis," which appeared in the March 31 edition of the Northside Sun. You asserted that, "In 2010 and 2011, the city repaved zero miles of roads." Of course, certain bloggers have used this erroneous piece of information to continue to bash the capital city.</p>
<p>My first reaction was: What would provoke such an absurd statement? In each of the 12 years that I served as mayor, the city had a street resurfacing/improvement program that was supported by budgeted resources. Any clear-thinking person would realize that the city council simply would not support a budget that did not have funds dedicated to street improvements (particularly, repaving and pothole repair). Your statement suggests that both the mayor and city council did not budget funds for streets, or budgeted the funds but did not spend them...for two consecutive years. Both notions are ridiculous, and neither one happened.</p>
<p>You mentioned “city audit” as the source of your information. So, I decided to examine the audits for the two years (FY10 and FY11) in question, as well as the year prior (FY09) and the year after (FY12). I undertook this exercise in order to provide correct information, and to counter the efforts of those who are apparently determined to re-write a certain portion of the city of Jackson's history. (For your information, city audits are based on financial activities that occur during the city's fiscal year [FY], which begins on October 1 of one calendar year and ends on September 30 of the next. Your and others' reference to 2010 and 2011 actually refers to the periods October 1, 2009 to September 30, 2010, and October 1, 2010 to September 30, 2011, respectively, if you are using city audits as your source of information.)</p>
<p>In my research I found the FY12 audit to be a good starting point. On page 133, under the chart labeled "Operating Indicators by Function," I immediately saw the problem. Under Highways and streets/Street resurfacing, the mileage for repaving was listed for each fiscal year in the 10-year period beginning with FY03, except there was a dash (-) for the 2010 and 2011 fiscal years. You apparently concluded that the dash meant that no resurfacing took place in those years. Had you looked at the notes to the chart you would have seen Note (3), which says "The dashes indicate data that is not available." The dashes do not indicate that there was no activity. Your conclusion was wrong and hastily drawn!</p>
<p>A closer and more thorough examination of the same chart reveals that there is a dash under "Fire/Number of calls answered" in FY10 and FY11, while there are 11,577 calls listed for FY09 and 9,403 for FY12. Would you conclude that the fire department did not answer a single call in FY10 and FY11? Better yet, under "Water/Average daily consumption," a dash is placed in the FY09, FY11 and FY12 columns, while the average daily consumption for FY10 was 24,024,000 gallons. According to your logic, no water was consumed in Jackson (and Byram) for three years!</p>
<p>Moreover, your article omitted a very important aspect of dealing with "Dilapidated roads" in Jackson, as is indicated-in the FY12 Operating Indicators by Function chart. According to the chart, the city repaired over 90,000 potholes during FY10 and FY11, the two years you would have your readers believe that nothing happened to improve the condition of our streets. In fact, this was part of an effort that started in FY10 that placed needed emphasis on infrastructure. For instance, we were successful in approaching the state Legislature in 2010 to change the “1% Sales Tax” statute for the city of Jackson to allocate most of the proceeds to streets and infrastructure improvements, the original legislation emphasized public safety. As you know, the proceeds from that initiative provides the city with its first long-term (20-year) funding streaming for street improvements. Although I opposed the oversight commission as part of the legislation, I am not opposed to the long-term funding that the law provides.</p>
<p>But, what happened regarding street resurfacing in FY10 and FY11? Glad you asked ... ln the fall of 2008, city officials approved the issuance of general obligation (GO) bonds for the express purpose of undertaking street resurfacing throughout the city. As a result, $26,210,000 in GO bonds were issued on January 1, 2009, and resurfacing started around March. These actions took place in FY09; and I came back into office in July, 2009, with three months remaining in the fiscal year. What is noteworthy, however, is the fact that over half of the bond funds ($15,021,677, to be exact) remained unspent as of the end of FY09, September 30, 2009.</p>
<p>In crafting subsequent fiscal year budgets (particularly for FY10 and FY11), I proposed and the council approved utilizing the 2009 GO bond proceeds to support the city's annual street resurfacing program. This was done primarily for two reasons: to utilize taxpayer dollars that had already been committed to a multi-year street resurfacing effort; and, to relax the strain on the city's general fund budget that had been created by city officials not identifying in 2008 the funding source to support the 20-year, $2.5 million annual repayment required to retire the debt.</p>
<p>The city audits indicate that 68.3 miles of streets were resurfaced in FY09. This is clearly not the case, as evidenced by the amount of bond proceeds that remained unspent at the end of the fiscal year. What likely is reflected is that 68.3 miles of streets were targeted at the time of the bond issuance. It is also likely that some of the targeted streets changed during the course of implementing the multi-year effort, possibly increasing the targeted mileage. But, what is certain is that a significant portion of the 68.3 miles of the streets apportioned to FY09 were actually resurfaced in FY10 and FY11.</p>
<p>Please see the "Schedule of Revenues, Expenditures and Changes in Fund Balances - Budget and Actual 2009 General Obligation Bond Funds" in the city audits for FY09 (p. 30), FY10 (p.92), FY11 (p. 92), FY12 (p. 94) and FY13 (p. 95) to track the expenditures of bond proceeds during my third term in office. Additionally, the 2009 bond proceeds were used throughout that time in conjunction with federal, state and local funds to carry out street resurfacing and construction projects; bridge replacements; and sidewalk and bus stop improvements to assist in the city's ADA compliance efforts. And, in-house paving crews were used to supplement the work of private sector contractors, especially for resurfacing street intersections.</p>
<p>I would have liked to have been more specific in the above comments, but time constraints, along with limited access to documents, prevented that from happening. However, I hope that, at best, this letter will motivate you to publicly correct the erroneous information that you conveyed to your readers; and, at least, it informs and enlightens you, and perhaps your readers.</p>
<p>Looking forward to your response, I remain ...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Harvey Johnson Jr., Former Mayor, City of Jackson</p>
<p>1997-2005 and 2009-2013</p>
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